Obama On Iraq - July 2004
The “Evolving” Barack Obama
When a liberal politician changes his mind, particularly when he journeys to an even more liberal position, you can count on his fellow travelers in the media to refer to such a fortuitous happenstance as an “evolution.” A case study of this phenomenon is to be found on the front page of today’s Boston Globe.
The story promises to look into Barack Obama’s changing positions on Iraq, or, as the headline puts it, “Obama stance on Iraq shows evolving view.” The Globe reports:
In July of 2004, the day after his speech at the Democratic convention catapulted him into the national spotlight, Barack Obama told a group of reporters in Boston that the United States had an “absolute obligation” to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success.
“The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster,” he said at a lunch sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, according to an audiotape of the session. “It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died. . . . It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective.”
